In general, bin-filling systems consist mainly of a feeding and transfer apron or belt conveyor (moving on a substantially horizontal plane), on which are laid in a sequential manner the agricultural products to be placed into the bins, and of an actual bin-filling device, or “head”, as it will be referred to hereinafter, which is made up of a vertical section whose top end is loaded with the produce successively brought by said conveyor, and the other end, located at a lower height, is inserted into the bin to distribute the produce therein.
In order to adjust the vertical distance of said lower end from the level of the produce already placed into the bins so as not to have an excessive distance between said lower end and the level of the produce in the bin—which would damage the quality of the produce dropping from an excessive height—this head, and therefore the respective lower end, is made mobile in the vertical direction inside the container being filled.
Said head is principally made up of:
a first device suitable to engage each farm product and to transfer it with a continuous motion downward, where said product is placed;
a second device that receives the produce from said first device and lets it fall inside the bin, spreading it out substantially on most of the higher surface of the produce already loaded into the bin.
Said first device is normally made up of a special continuous conveyor equipped with individual receptacles formed by relative “finger-like” elements that externally grip the produce and set it down piece by piece and with a continuous movement from said feeding conveyor into a rotary cradle, into which they are automatically released by gravity when they reach the lower position.
Said second device is in fact said rotary cradle, placed inside the bin but in a position slightly higher than the level of the produce already placed into the bin; said rotary cradle is provided with devices suitable to carry the produce not to a fixed position, but to continually variable positions above the greater part of the bin, and to allow the produce to fall therein so that it is ideally distributed over the whole upper surface of the produce already loaded.
The above description illustrates in a complete, although synthetic manner, the fundamental structure and the operation of a basic type of system, normally used to dry-load the produce inside a bin.
It is therefore a system well known in the art and that has also been disclosed in patents:                EP 1 740 465 B1 (to DE GREEF'S)        FR 2 753 683 B1 (to XEDA INTERNATIONAL SA).        
Thus, for the sake of brevity and for greater clarity, what is not explicitly described and claimed below in the present patent should be considered as described and disclosed in the cited patents.
The solutions claimed in said documents bear witness to the common concern among the operators in the field to handle agricultural produce with great care to avoid damaging it; in fact, some agricultural products are extremely delicate and sensitive to bumps, and therefore their handling, packaging, transportation, etc., must be carried out so as to avoid as much as possible any risk or possibility of impacts or rubbing.
Accordingly, the above patent FR 2 753 683 B1 discloses a single powered belt 14, both for the horizontal conveyor and the vertical section, as described in the relative Specification on page 11, starting on line 25, for the purpose of avoiding damage to the produce that would occur if the produce were transferred from a horizontal conveyor to a vertical conveyor.
The above-mentioned Patent EP 1 740 465 B1 expresses the same concern about avoiding damaging the produce: see in fact col. 1, lines 15-24.
With the objective of avoiding this risk, said patent introduces the use of a brush-like element (11, 15, 16) suitable to engage softly and piece by piece each type of produce, increasing effectively the produce engagement surface and thus decreasing the average pressure applied on the produce and, as a logical consequence, the possibility of damaging it.
However, the solutions described, although valid with regard to handling agricultural products, still do not resolve a further problem and drawback: in fact, during the process of filling the bins with a filling head of the type previously described, the following situation occurs: due to the fact that the produce that feeds said filling head comes generally from grading systems, the head is fed in an absolutely random manner and with a rate that is normally well below its filling capacity. In fact, the objective is to avoid that in extreme—but still possible—conditions said head could be supplied with a flow rate of produce greater than the handling and filling capacity of the same head, as in this case the produce would simply spill out of the head.
Thus, the filling capacity of the head is kept considerably greater than the average flow of incoming produce.
This explains how the produce processed by the head arrives to it in an absolutely random manner.
Thus it is entirely possible, and it is often the case, that in certain intervals of time there is no produce being fed toward a given bin. In this case however, the filling head continues to run, because it has not been notified in any way of the absence of produce, and this leads to the consequence that the flaps used by said head continue to rub on the last loaded produce (which thus lies on top of the mass of produce already laid in the bin).
Since in this situation the head continues to turn without discharging any new produce, the result is that said flaps continue to rub always on the same produce, and since as is well known this is a delicate product, the final effect is that it suffers a sort of “shaving” and is thus damaged, due to the prolonged rubbing effect of said flaps.
This serious problem goes along with another drawback; that is, the continuous operation of the rotating filling head, and of the connected devices, causes a clear waste of energy, and therefore a cost due to the limited capacity of the system to adjust itself on the basis of the effective workload.
Turning again to the produce, since it is immediately processed, that is, sent to the bin, there is the occurrence of the phenomenon well known in the field whereby the produce tends to spread itself in the bin with a random distribution, which results in an irregular distribution.
In fact, with reference to FIG. 1, a normal bin of parallelepiped shape is shown partly filled with agricultural produce by a filling head of known type.
It can be seen that the top surface 1 of the mass of produce 2 already charged into the bin shows a completely irregular distribution, as is caused in fact by the random arrival and distribution of each product, and is not uniform and level as would be natural to imagine.
Basically, it can be seen that said upper surface 1 is arranged with uneven sunken zones, or depressions 3, alternating with raised zones 4.
This phenomenon is fully evident in FIG. 2, which shows the arrangement on a plane of the bin cross section and cuts through the mass of produce already placed in the bin, and therefore intercepts the upper profile of the distribution of produce in the bin; FIG. 2 in particular clearly shows such upper profile.
The phenomenon described above generates in turn two types of drawbacks:                A) the first and greatest shortcoming is caused by the fact that, when well-known sensing means sense that the height of the products inside the bin being filled reaches a certain predefined level, that bin is considered to be completely filled, and thus it is carried away and replaced with an empty one. However, exactly because of its irregular filling, normally that bin could still receive an additional quantity of produce, if only it were uniformly distributed over the whole loading area.        
This fact generates an evident and well-known diseconomy, as it requires using, and thus handling, washing, storing, etc., a needlessly large number of bins, as much as 30% larger than the number of bins that would be sufficient for a given quantity of produce.                B) the second drawback is naturally caused by the fact that, if and when the individual product is released by the filling head on a typical depression 3 in the previously loaded produce, the falling distance “d” (FIG. 2) can be unacceptable to maintain the quality of both the produce being released and the underlying produce, as this would thwart the use of the filling head, whose function is in fact to handle the delicate produce with great care.        